


Live by the Sword

by Brosedshield



Series: Apo'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Deer!Impala, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:46:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: When heads need to come off, Dean's an ax man...(After the fire at Stanford, an attack in the mountains help Sam and Dean find their rhythm again as brothers and family.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Apo'Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629988
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Live by the Sword

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This AU is a strange place, built on a pun and spiraling out of control. If you can't handle a post-Apocalyptic world with mutant African deer, and a gleeful disregard for the stodgy rules of logic, turn back now!
> 
> Author note #2: Sometimes the beta process fixes a couple wrong words and I'm good to go. This time lavinialavender made me so much better, the original draft will hopefully never see the light of day. You should thank her, profusely.

When heads need to come off, Dean’s an ax man.

Sure, he loves guns (when they can find ammo, when standard lead bullets will do shit), and machetes work in a pinch with a little power behind the wrist, but an ax has a certain visceral thrill and always gets the job done right.

Swords, on the other hand, take a delicacy he doesn’t have and doesn’t give shit about. You need power for swords, a lot of practice, and there’s no easy way to hide it, no good excuse for carrying one. Nobody trusts a guy with a sword. Maybe when horses were the only transportation—and there was less nuclear fallout—a sword could have been a monster killer, for dragons and shit like that, but in this new Dark Age they seemed designed for very human monsters.

Human monsters, not the ex-human fallout-victim zombies that jump Sam and Dean when they’re camping on the lower edge of the Rockies on their journey east. It’s a part of the country where the towns aren’t always close enough for them to make in one day. Camping can be dangerous, especially on the edge of autumn in the uninhabited mountains—the freezing nights alone can kill a man, even if the monsters don’t come for the taste of human flesh.

Yeah, Dean doesn’t do delicate, but Sam’s just fine. Or as delicate as you can be with three feet of razor-sharp folded steel. While Dean puts his shoulder muscles into every swing of the ax, chopping gleefully into foaming mouths and crazy eyes, Sam stands still, a steady shield at his brother’s back, waiting until the fallout-zombies come to him. Then, at what seems like the last second, he moves like fire, the katana a lightning flash through the gathering gloom, and then there are severed heads steaming in the crisp mountain air, mouths gaping and mad eyes shocked at the break from their bodies.

The attack isn’t very big, maybe eight walkers—no problem for two armed hunters and a pissed-off, giant mutant Impala with sharpened horns—but when it’s done, the brothers stand in a wind that carries the first taste of snow and shiver as the sweat dries on their arms. Neither grabbed their winter parka in the mad rush for weapons, but having good priorities is one of the reasons the Winchesters are still alive.

After slaughter comes cleanup. They burn the bodies and turn to their individual, post-battle rituals. In many ways these old habits are just as important as the killing, as important as dousing the campfire and continuing on Dad’s trail—a trail as nebulous and faint as any ghost they’ve ever chased.

Dean brushes the blood out of the Impala’s coat before it cakes in, and Sam gives the same careful attention to their weapons. Their hands begin to move in the same rhythm, cleaning away the pain and death. The beat soothes and follows their slowing heartbeats. It’s something in their bones, movements inherited from Dad—before he became that ghost they chase—and whether they learned it from him or it’s in their blood, it’s a necessity after the blood and death. They clean it all away before they move on with the bloody things they have to do.

After Sam—thorough but indifferent—cleans Dean’s ax, he puts it aside and picks up the sword. Dean determinedly does not look at the folded-steel katana, because he has never seen it before, and that means Sam got it at Stanford.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means to him, doesn’t want to put it into words. _When you abandoned us, it never occurred to me you would still be killing things and cleaning up after. I never thought you would do what I was doing, just half a country away._

The silence lengthens while the night gets colder and the blood wipes away. Dean does not want to break it, but—fuck it—he can’t not either. In the last four years there have been too many hunts alone, just Dean and the Impala breathing in his hair while he combs the blood off its hide. He doesn’t want to pretend that Sam’s not here, pretend he’s the only family he can count on.

“You’ve gotten better since you left,” he says. “Didn’t think that would happen, what with you being a college boy and all. But you were damned good, Sammy.”

He regrets the words almost immediately, not sure how Sam will take them. They are still having trouble knowing what will come off as smartass-brother and what just picks at the old scars. They are smartass brothers, but the urge to dig at what hurts between them is just as instinctive. It’s as though they’re both amazed that wounds so deep ever healed over.

But Sam takes it well. “Yeah,” he says. “I joined the militia my first year.”

“Really?”

“What, you don’t think we have monsters in Palo Alto?” Sam’s eyes are on the sword, and he’s not angry, but Dean can feel the defensiveness rising in him, the automatic attack. “Maybe not as steady as it was with dad, but Northern California has its share of fallout mutations and supernatural crap. Maybe more. We’re not that far from the L.A. blast zone, relatively speaking.”

“Yeah, of course, it just surprises me. I mean…” Dean stops talking, stops combing because he can’t quite figure out what he wants to say and what he wants to mean when he says it. _Didn’t you run from us to get away from killing things? Didn’t showing your skills blow the con you were playing? I thought you left to pretend you were terrified of the monsters in the night, like all the fucked-up people in this fucked-up world. I thought you would get weak, and soft, and remember one day that you needed me—not get stronger when you left me._

The awkward moment breaks when the Impala turns and tries to bite his wrist. It’s saved their lives more than once, and saves Dean a little bit now. By the time he’s caught the Impala’s bridle and reminded it that the blood on its face will never come out if he doesn’t have both hands, Dean has something to say.

“Doesn’t exactly fit the lawyer image, you know? Thought you’d be swinging law books, not katanas.”

Sam grins, stands and sheaths the blade in one long, smooth movement. The steel hisses smoothly into the battered leather sheath, and without the bare blade in his hands, part of Sam’s strength is hidden too, wrapped and blunted.

“I thought so too, but the militia was pretty thin. They needed every body they could get.” Sam slides seamlessly into a joint-popping stretch, hands still wrapped around the sheath. “But it’s not just that. I had this prof, Dr. Griffith, used to say that the zombies weren’t just going to stop eating us because we were lawyers.” Sam’s mouth quirks. “’We don’t taste that fucking bad, boys, at least not to the dead.’” He catches Dean’s eyes. “His exact words.”

Dean grins. “I think I’d like that guy.”

“Yeah, he was pretty good with bladework too. Made me better. Made a lot of people better.” Sam laughs. “Hell, you should have seen some of those poor bastards, Dean. They couldn’t really get worse. Tough guys that hadn’t even held a gun before, and they were trying to single-handedly save California from the zombie menace.”

Sam’s looking down at the sword again, and he’s not laughing anymore. He walks to the Impala’s discarded harness and tucks the sheathed blade into the saddlebags that hold their life to the giant deer’s back. Dean wonders for the first time if Sam would have preferred to wear the sword—he thinks he saw a shoulder harness for it. Sam is tall enough that he could almost hide it under his jacket, if he were walking. But, mounted on the Impala with Dean, there is no way it could be comfortable or safe to wear the blade. No more than Dean would wear a gun in the back of his pants while his brother’s chest leans against his shoulders, his brother’s head rests in the crook of his neck while he sleeps, his brother’s hands wrap tight around his waist when the wind threatens to blow them both away. Dean wonders if Sam would be happier walking and wearing the sword than riding, weaponless, with him. After all, Sam made it clear in the past that he doesn’t need Dean. He left for Palo Alto and a world where people only saw what he wanted them to see: the sheath and not the sword. In that world, Dean doubts he was more to his brother than an old memory, a spare knife he didn’t need.

“Maybe they did save California,” Dean says. He keeps his brush steady on the Impala’s back, even though the blood is almost gone, and tries to focus on the here and now, the stillness of the mountain, the fall of the snow. “I mean you said it yourself, you didn’t get hit much in Palo Alto.”

Sam turns back, his eyes sad. “A lot of those tough guys died the first year, before I joined. Nothing I could do. Stupid civilians, thought they could handle a werewolf with a few guns.”

Dean winces. There’s nothing to say to that. He’s not going to think about the massacre it must have been. Any survivor wouldn’t really have been a survivor when the next full moon came around.

“Yeah, I know.” Sam smiles, but it’s not a happy smile. He’s clearly thought about those deaths more than once. Maybe he had nightmares about it, before Jess died on the ceiling and they started the hunt for their missing father. “That’s when I decided I had to join. Because they were just so damned bad.”

Dean laughs and gives the tangles of the Impala’s coat one last swipe. That’s about as good as he’s going to do until they get somewhere with enough warm water to give the beast a soapy spot-cleaning. He begins strapping the harness over the Impala’s back and girth, tying the packs in place, making sure the saddle, saddlebags and the damn sword are secure. After a second, Sam helps, his hands getting in Dean’s way, cold, bloodstained fingers running into each other as they try to secure the same leather straps.

Eventually, Sam remembers these movements too, and the harness settles over the beast’s shoulders. Dean is grateful that Sam can reach the higher straps—even when the Impala stands and towers over them, stomping its hooves—but he misses his brother’s fumbling hands against his, each fleeting contact of warm palms a contrast to the cold leather of the harness and the Impala’s bristly fur. It made him feel like Sam was twelve and short again, holding a blade for the first time.

When the last belt is tight through its hook, and the fire stamped out, Sam reaches out a long arm and grabs Dean’s arm. “Hey Dean, thanks,” he says, and doesn’t look at his brother. He leans his head against the Impala’s flank and looks down. Only his hand on Dean’s arm connects them. “Thanks for teaching me…all this shit. And making it important.”

Dean’s automatic response is to say that they weren’t his lessons. Dad was there the whole time, everything they’ve ever known, every way they know to kill and hide and run and lie, they learned from Dad, but he realizes that for Sam that’s not completely true.

Sam doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t look up, but his hand stays locked on Dean’s arm, and the emotions they haven’t shared in four years seem to burn down through that human touch until Dean can hardly think his own thoughts through what Sam says to him, clenching his hand in his brother’s jacket. _You were always there with me. When I got stronger it was because of you. When I fought it was for you. When I came back, it’s never been for Dad, it’s always been for you._

The sword in the saddlebags is just one more weapon amid the salt, guns, and kerosene. Nothing special about it compared to the connection re-lit between them, the wholeness Dean feels in his bones.

Sam lets go of Dean’s arm only to help him into the saddle, giving Dean the boost he doesn’t really need. Then Dean pulls Sam up behind him, one hand sliding back around Sam’s hip to steady him in the saddle while the other wraps the reins around his wrist. The Impala shakes its head, knowing by the weight on its back that both its humans are home again, on its back, ready to go. Dean clucks at it, tapping his heels, and the great deer ignores him—or pretends to—and slowly moves away from their campsite.

“Mind if I sleep?” Sam asks.

Dean pats his little brother’s arms as they wrap around his chest without waiting for an answer. “No, go for it. I’m good for a few hours yet.”

“Mmmhmm. Damn zombies.” Sam settles his face in the curve of Dean’s neck, nestles into the warmth of his brother’s body.

Dean feels the difference when Sam falls asleep. One second he’s tense and unhappy in a way Dean can’t pin down, and the next he relaxes into the saddle-sway as the Impala paces down the snow-dusted path. For once, Sam isn’t angry or driven, or at war against the old pattern of their lives. He’s just a Winchester, asleep, knowing family will keep him safe.

And Dean feels peace, the peace of having Sam back, the peace of knowing that no matter their pissing contests and arguments and the different feelings toward Dad, they never really left each other. Maybe they were separated in space, in time, but in this moment, neither exists. Only Dean and his brother on a road that may never end. He feels Sam’s warmth pressing against his back—so real compared to the hunt for Dad that haunts them both. That warmth, for Dean, is a silent promise that he is home, again—at last—with Sam.


End file.
